Have you ever wondered which Linux distro is the most popular? Many people will point to the statistics at DistroWatch.com. These statistics are generated by the number of "hits" for each distro page at DistroWatch. Unfortunately, this allows the possibility of "ballot-stuffing" by making multiple visits to distro page that you like.

While users are pleading with Dell to sell systems with Linux pre-installed, smaller vendors have been offering Linux on OEM hardware for some time. One of the more recent arrivals in the OEM Linux market is System 76, which sells a decent selection of desktop, workstation, and notebook systems with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.

Dell said that they'll soon start offering Linux on desktop and notebook systems. My recent experience with Linux on Dell notebooks has been interesting.

I had an older Dell laptop laying around for more than year. It had a failed power charging board in it (the board that handles both AC and DC power), which failed in one of those classic "I shouldn't have done that" moments...

Maybe it's just me, but I believe Ubuntu and Canonical have a severe case of the Not Invented Here. Instead of building on one of the three most suitable distributions at the time (each with advantages, disadvantages and often trade-offs): Debian, and Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrake Linux) and MEPIS, they have forked Debian, and created an improved but incompatible version.

Mandriva, the France-based Linux distributor, will have a version of its Mandriva Linux 2007 pre-installed on Intel's new low-end laptop for students, the Classmate PC.

According to Intel, the ClassMatePC is a rugged laptop with a water-resistant keyboard and a theft-control feature based on a network-issued digital certificate. Its processor is an Intel Mobile 900MHz Celeron ULV chip.

The recently released DragonFly BSD 1.8.1-REL incited me top give it a very quick try. I always loved their logo and I was curios about how can act an OS forked from FreeBSD 4.8 — see Wikipedia for a short history of the DragonFly.

This short guide describes how you can configure your GNOME desktop so that you can open files and directories with a single mouseclick instead of a double click. This is helpful if you switch from Windows to Linux and used to open files and directories with a single click on your Windows desktop, too.

PengYou is a promising Java-based client/server document management solution and versioning tool for individual users and small workgroups of up to 10 users. In its current version -- a very early stage of development -- PengYou offers only bare-bones functionality, but the developers have all the basics right.

A couple of weeks back, I was greeted by the news of a very interesting project having been moved to KDE base. The project in question is a file manager named Dolphin. What is unique about this file manager is that it is light weight, is simple to navigate without overwhelming the Computer neophytes but at the same time does not sacrifice much functionality.

I have been neglecting the BSD line of operating systems lately, but a new release of DragonFlyBSD has come out and I figured this would be a good opportunity to try it out. I have never used DragonFly, but I used to use FreeBSD extensively (I still have it running a few servers) and I’ve also used OpenBSD and NetBSD in the day.

I found something this evening in passing that I wanted to pass on to the rest of you. It’s a small fix that will allow the Cube to function properly with the current setup of Feisty and the desktop effects. Currently you can get the wobbly windows but no Cube.

In any event, try the tip below to get the Cube to function if you’d like to stick with Compiz (vs Beryl).

DELL currently offers Linux as an option for certain laptop and desktop models. Talk is that this service may be expanded to all models. This is a good thing, of course. Results of a recent survey by DELL show that more than 70% of over 100.000 respondents want to use Linux for home and office! What has been keeping companies like DELL away from this?

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install VMware Server on a Mandriva Free 2007 desktop system. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems (virtual machines) such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system.

MEPIS is pleased to announce its new Community site at www.mepis.org/community. This new site will provide a better way for the MEPIS community to interact with each other, while making it easier for users to find helpful information.

A few moments ago, renowned Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman had the pleasure of announcing the general availability of the Linux kernel 4.8.13 and Linux kernel 4.4.37 LTS maintenance updates.
While many rolling GNU/Linux distributions have just received the Linux 4.8.12 kernel, it looks like Linux kernel 4.8.13 is now available with more improvements and bug fixes, but it's not a major milestone. According to the appended shortlog and the diff since last week's Linux 4.8.12 kernel release, a total of 46 files were changed, with 214 insertions and 95 deletions.

openSUSE's Douglas DeMaio reports on the latest Open Source and GNU/Linux technologies that landed in the repositories of the openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling operating system.

What Is A VPN Connection? Why To Use VPN?

We all have heard about VPN sometime. Most of us normal users of internet use it. To bypass the region based restrictions of services like Netflix or Youtube ( Yes, youtube has geo- restrictions too). In fact, VPN is actually mostly used for this purpose only. ​

The Libreboot C201 from Minifree is really really really ridiculously open source

Open source laptops – ones not running any commercial software whatsoever – have been the holy grail for free software fans for years. Now, with the introduction of libreboot, a truly open source boot firmware, the dream is close to fruition.
The $730 laptop is a bog standard piece of hardware but it contains only open source software. The OS, Debian, is completely open source and to avoid closed software the company has added an Atheros Wi-Fi dongle with open source drivers rather than use the built-in Wi-Fi chip.